


Five times Tim got Steph breakfast and one time he didn't

by KevlarMasquerade (nightsstarr)



Category: Batgirl (Comics), DCU (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, TimSteph, Waffles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-17
Updated: 2013-07-17
Packaged: 2017-12-20 11:08:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/886540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightsstarr/pseuds/KevlarMasquerade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim, Steph, and waffles. It's clear the two of them are meant to be together, and i'm not talking about the boy.</p>
<p>Requested by Bubbleztehpwn on tumblr</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five times Tim got Steph breakfast and one time he didn't

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Tim might be sorta OOC as per the end of Red Robin in this? I sorta think that he'd return to the sweet Timmy that he was before Bruce died as he gets older. Also, my skills in calculus leave much to be desired. I draw a lot from Red Robin, which I don't think you've read, Bubblez, sorry (not sorry).

"Drake," Damian said neutrally as he took an assorted handful of fruit from a bowl on the counter.

Tim turned his attention away from the bowl of waffle mix he held in front of him. "Oh. Hi."

"I am not thrilled to see you, either," Damian answered as he peeled back a section of banana peel.

"Noted," Tim responded, rolling his eyes to himself. Finished stirring, he poured the waffle mixture into the heated iron he had prepared.

"What are you doing here, anyway? I was led to believe that you had removed yourself from the vicinity."

"The apartment in Old Gotham's not done yet. It'll be a few days."

Damian humphed around his banana, displeased with this answer.

"Hey, um, I have a question," Tim ventured casually, leaning back on the counter.

"Unsurprising."

Tim sighed. "Right. Uh, what's Steph doing here?"

Damian's eyebrows rose. "I do not see what concern it is of yours."

"Just humor me."

"She returned late and she begins a summer class at Gotham University this morning. Grayson offered a spare bedroom as sleeping quarters despite my protests."

"Oh." Tim passed for a second before continuing. "What was she doing, late? She's okay, right?"

Damian narrowed his eyes at the older boy. "As I said, I do not see why it concerns you."

It's like he tried to be annoying. Thankfully, Dick walked in before Tim decided to throw the waffle-mix covered wooden spoon at the little demon.

"Oh, wow, the two of you in the same room without knives or bo-staves."

"Ha-ha," Tim muttered.

"No knives that you know about," Damian replied.

Dick seemed unfazed by the psychopathy of the newest Robin and instead turned his attention to Tim. "Waffles?"

Fighting back a blush, Tim grumbled, "Yeah. So?"

"So the fact that Steph slept over is just a wild coincidence?"

"I'm just making waffles," Tim answered defensively.

"Oh. Now I see why you were interested in Brown's activities last night," Damian announced smugly, crossing his arms with a smirk.

"I wasn't interested. I was just wondering."

Dick met Tim's gaze with a doubtful look. "Yeah, okay. But you should know that Steph was kind of… out. With—"

"Detective Nick Gage, Commissioner Gordon's newest underling. And rather fond of Batgirl." Damian finished, wearing a smile that showed his teeth which Tim swore looked pointed.

"She was on a date?" Tim asked incredulously. "Steph? Who's Nick Gage, anyway?"

"Commissioner Gordon's newest underling," Damian snapped. "Pay attention, simpleton."

"Where did he even come from?"

"He is from—"

"Quiet," Dick shushed his youngest brother, who glowered at the command but obeyed sulkily. "He's been around for a while now, Tim."

"He hasn't been in any papers," Tim sulked.

Dick shrugged. "Guess not. He's kind of been the go-between for Steph and the police force. Nice guy."

Time glared at Dick for the last part of that statement, then frowned at himself. "So what?" he asked, his voice sounding alarmingly hollow to his own ears. "I'm just making waffles. For me."

"Uh-huh," Dick said, still looking doubtful.

"Drake?"

"Lots of people like waffles," Tim snapped.

"Drake."

"So you're fine," Dick concluded. "There's nothing bothering you."

"Drake!"

"Of course not."

"Drake, I realize that you are in fact an idiot, but—"

"'Morning, boys!" Steph's cheery voice floated into the kitchen. "Hey, who's burning waffles?" She shooed Tim away from the waffle iron as smoke curled out from the sides.

"Really?" Dick whispered. "Nothing bothering you at all?"

"Shut up," Tim replied glumly.

"Well, these aren't too burned! They're salvageable, with enough syrup," Steph declared, waving smoke away from the iron. "So," she continued cheerily, oblivious to the previous topic of conversation, "How's Tam?"

"I… wouldn't know," Tim answered, pushing his fingers through his hair.

"Ouch. Sorry." Steph began rifling through drawers. "Lynx, then? Cass?" Brandishing a spatula, she added, "Nyssa?"

"Hey, that's not funny," Tim scolded, fighting back a blush.

"Nyssa?" Damian asked. "Nyssa al Ghul? What would Drake know about Nyssa?"

"Nothing!" Tim, Steph, and Dick answered at once, earning a glare from the ten-year-old.

…

There was a knock on Stephanie Brown's dorm room door. "Hang on, Kara," she said into her computer's microphone. "Lemme get that. Glasses on, please."

Wiping the potato chip crumbs from her hands onto the knees of her jeans, she stood and opened her door. She hadn't been expecting anyone.

"Hello?" she asked politely, and he expression fell into a surprised smile as she realized Tim was standing in front of her, dressed for the forecasted flurries. "Oh, hey! What're you doing here?"

"I heard," he said simply. "Congratulations."

"Thanks! Um, come in," she said, opening the door wider.

"Thanks." Tim removed his hat and unzipped his coat.

"Wait. Do I smell—?"

"Waffles," Tim affirmed, showing her a Styrofoam container. "Fresh from Wendy's Diner."

"Oh god, I love that place. You so didn't have to." She took the Styrofoam container and inhaled the scent of warm waffles.

"Is that Tim?" Kara's voice called from Steph's computer.

"Kara?" Tim asked, and Steph rushed to get her laptop and angle the camera so that Kara could see Tim. "Congrats on the group," he said politely.

"Don't congratulate me. It was all Steph."

"What're you guys calling yourself? The Flock?"

"Okay, I wanted to be Chickadees, but Amy wouldn't let us," Steph said morosely.

"Yeah, that doesn't really surprise me," Tim chuckled.

"I liked Chickadees," Kara added wistfully. "Anyway, I'm gonna go, Steph. See ya, Tim." She waved and then the image went black as she hung up.

"I can't believe you thought Amy would let you guys call yourself the Chickadees," Tim said with a shake of his head.

Steph reached into the Styrofoam container and pulled out a waffle, foregoing a fork and knife in favor of eating it with her fingers. "We thought M'gann would wear her down, but nope."

"You guys got full funding from Batman Incorporated, right? Because if not I could—"

"Hold it, Boy Moneybags." Swallowing the last bit of her waffle, Steph lowered an eyebrow at Tim. "I don't want your money. We're fine."

"I was just offering," Tim reminded her meekly.

"I know. Sorry. I just… don't want to get into that with you. Like it's not complicated enough between us."

Tim coughed and said, "You know that was your outside voice, right?"

Steph winced. "Um… sorry. The filter's… something me and Babs need to work on."

"I didn't mean it as… anything. I was just trying to help."

"I know, thanks. But we're doing okay."

The silence that settled between them was more awkward than Steph preferred, and Tim only made it worse by asking, "So how's the detective?"

"Nick's good. I don't think he's really down with me keeping the ol' identity a secret identity." She picked another waffle out of the container.

"You're doing that?" Tim asked, and Steph tilted her head at him in question.

"Yeah. Why wouldn't I?"

"You're not as easy to trace back to Bruce as I ever was."

"Yeah, but Babs. Nick knows the Commish. If he puts it together that could be it for Babs."

"You don't trust him?" Tim asked quietly.

"Did you trust me when you wouldn't tell me?" Steph rebutted, her voice gentle. "Babs doesn't trust him and I have to respect that."

"Yeah. It's hard," Tim agreed, and he took one of the waffles and took a bite out of it. "But if anyone can juggle it, Steph you can."

"Thanks," she said, and they fell into a much more comfortable silence as they chewed their waffles.

…

"When's your class?" Tim asked as he put a mug of coffee in front of Steph, who was seated at his kitchen table.

"Ugh. I don't know. Noon. Shoot me. Why did I decide to take Calc II anyway?"

"It's not so bad. Here." Tim glanced over her shoulder at the textbook she was slouched over. "You just—"

"How do you know all this crap, anyway?" Steph asked, annoyed. "Boy Dropout," she added.

"It's just calculus," Tim muttered.

"Hey. Calculus is hard. Like comedy."

"Steph, Damian could probably do this."

"Damian does math better than me, he chooses crimefighting attire better than you. He's a child prodigy. Let's not involve him in this."

"There's nothing wrong with the Red Robin costume," Tim muttered. "You're not focusing."

"Of course I'm not. It's nine o'clock, I have a final in three hours, and I've been awake since ten yesterday."

"Let me get you real coffee," Tim offered hastily, taking the mug he put in front of her and dumping it in the sink.

"And now you insult me by giving me decaf?" she wailed.

"Do you really think you should be studying instead of sleeping?"

"If I don't pass this calculus exam, I'm gonna get a C. If I get a C, my mom starts riding me about the Batgirl thing. So yeah, let's study."

"Fine. So what's the first thing you do with this graph?"

"Solve it?"

"Yeah… How?"

"If I knew that, why would I be here?" Steph sighed. "OhgodI'mgonnafail."

"Calm down."

"Maybe I should drop out, too. Maybe pre-med isn't my thing."

"Steph, you can do this." Tim walked over to the freezer. "I know what'll make you feel better."

"Are you doing what I think you're doing?"

"What do you think I'm doing?"

"Not calculus."

Tim sighed and pulled out a box of frozen waffles. "Happy?"

"No. Getting there, though."

"Listen, don't worry too much about studying. Have breakfast first, then we'll work on it."

"Thanks."

Tim put the waffles in the microwave and he poured Steph another mug of coffee, which she took gratefully.

"Could you imagine if I went to Damian for help with calculus?" she asked after she took a sip of coffee.

"Could you imagine if I went to Damian for help picking out a costume?" Tim asked.

"It couldn't be any worse," Steph muttered.

"Thanks."

"Oh, come on, I was kidding!"

"No you weren't."

"Okay, you got me. I'm telling you, if you lost the cowl it'd be a lot better."

"I like the cowl. It's useful."

"Fine. Just don't be surprised when Lynx stops singling you out for forbidden vigilante kisses and goes after Damian."

"Gross."

"Just remember that it'll be your fault."

The microwave beeped and Tim transferred the waffles onto a cool plate. "Syrup?"

"Nah. I'll have 'em black."

"That's coffee."

…

"Steph?"

Tim's call did nothing to distract the young woman from her training exercise, dodging under an attack from one of Tim's programmed robots and slamming two of them with her bo-staff.

She was obviously upset about something, it didn't take a genius to see that. Whether she was ignoring him or couldn't hear him, Tim didn't know, but he didn't bother calling her again. Instead, he deactivated the system and the robots shut down with a whine, which didn't stop Stephanie from taking a few last second swings.

"What're you doing here?" he asked as she swept her hair away from her forehead, panting.

"Sorry," she mumbled, shrinking the bo-staff and sliding it into her jeans pocket.

"I mean, not that you're not welcome, but… Don't you have class?"

She shrugged. "It was only a gen-ed. I needed to practice and the practice robots at the Firewall talk too much."

""Did anything happen?"

"Jeez, Boy Wonder, read me like a book, why don'tcha."

"Do you wanna… I don't know… Talk about it or something?" Tim asked awkwardly. He ruffled his hair uncomfortably.

"I guess," Steph sighed.

"Or… Like… video chat Kara or something?"

"She's busy."

"Oh. Then why don't we talk about it?"

"I don't know, Tim. Maybe if I wanted to talk about it, I'd be talking about it!"

"Um…" he stammered, unsure of what to do.

A violent sigh escaped Steph's lips and she plopped onto the bench that lined the wall. "We broke up."

"You what?"

"Me and Nick."

"Oh. Sorry."

"It wasn't, like, bad or anything. He wasn't so cool with the secret identity remaining a secret identity and I wasn't cool with it not."

"Because of Babs?" Tim asked knowingly.

"Actually, once we hit one year, she told me I could tell him," she admitted. "I just… didn't want to."

"You didn't?" Tim asked, rising his eyebrows. He hadn't expected that.

A sharp glare forced him to adapt a more neutral expression. "No. I didn't."

"Why?"

"Because I was scared, okay?" Steph exploded, standing with such ferocity that her hair stuck to her face, which was still slightly damp with sweat from her exercise. "I liked Nick a lot. He was awesome and he was always nice to me, and if I could have just loosened up a little I probably could've loved him. But I didn't because I knew that in the back of my mind I'd always… Oh, never mind."

"What?" Tim asked, confused and just slightly hopeful. "You'd always what?"

"Nothing." Stephanie turned away from him and took a clean towel from where they hung on pegs on the wall, drying off her face. "Come on. If I don't look too bad, why don't we go to a diner?"

With a glance at his watch, Tim informed her, "It's three in the afternoon."

"So what? Any time's a good time for waffles, right?"

A small smile pulled at Tim's mouth. "I guess. Or mashed potatoes."

Steph laughed. "I don't know. I'm not really in a mashed potatoes kind of mood. C'mon, I'll pay."

"You're not paying, Steph," Tim warned as he followed her to the stairs that led to the first floor of his personal base made from the hollowed-out theatre in Old Gotham.

…

Tim was at Steph's Gotham University-owned apartment, a nice change of pace for him as he usually only saw her at his base or on patrol, or sometimes at the Manor.

The sound of stretching plastic, growing deeper as Steph extended her arm to roll the tape out of its wheel, was cut off with a ripping noise as she used her mouth to tear away a piece.

"Tape?" Tim laid his palm flat out in the air, waiting for her to toss the roll to him.

She lay her piece of tape over the folded-down edges of a cardboard box and tossed the wheel to him. "Thanks for helping me pack," she said as he caught it.

"No problem."

Having just graduated from GU, she had about a week before she began Med School. In Syracuse.

Tim hadn't said so out loud, but he wished she could stay at a school in Gotham. But she landed a full ride to a school in Syracuse, and he couldn't argue with that. Not that he would argue against a decision she'd made, anyway.

"Phew!" Steph sighed, leaning back as she kneeled. "Are you getting bored yet?"

"I guess," Tim shrugged, "But we still have more to—"

"Let's get outta here."

"Whatever." He abandoned his box of Steph's things and walked over to the door, stuffing his feet into his winter boots. She was already wrapping a scarf around her neck and slipping on her coat when he was finished.

"Woulda been nice to graduate in summer," she said wistfully.

"That's what happens when you wait so long to declare a major," Tim reminded her as he opened the door for her.

Slinging her lanyard around her neck, she stuck her tongue out at him. "Like you would know, Boy Dropout."

It'd been years since he'd been Robin, but she still insisted on prefixing each nickname for him with 'Boy'. It was nice, in her own weird way.

"Okay, Dr. Brown," he said, trying and feeling to hide a smirk as she visibly blanched.

"Oh god, don't call me that." Bending to reach the lock without taking off her lanyard, she locked the door, then spun around and gave Tim a quick shove.

"You don't want to be a doctor?"

"I don't want to go to medical school. It's scary."

"Scary doesn't usually stop you," he pointed out as they exited into the windy cold of Gotham City.

"Oh don't worry. It isn't."

"Good." It was so familiar, being with Steph, walking around Gotham like this.

"Look, Tim…" Stephanie took a wide step and kicked a rock on the sidewalk with her toes. "I just wanted to tell you… I'm gonna miss you when I'm upstate."

"I'll miss you too, Steph. Who else is going to break into my house while I'm asleep?"

"No," she said seriously, shaking her head. "I mean, really miss you."

The smile slipped from Tim's mouth into a more serious, if slightly surprised, look. "Oh."

"I'll miss you too," he said, and self-consciously, he brought one hand up to the nape of his neck to scratch at it. "I mean really miss you."

Her eyes sparkled with excitement, but the glimmer faded quickly. "Kinda sucks that I have to go now, huh?"

"I guess so. But it doesn't have to totally suck."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Steph asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Well, I mean, there's video chatting and… you know, Batman Incorporated has a lot of jets. We can take this slow, Steph."

"Well, yeah," she said thoughtfully. "Or we could not." Smiling, she tugged him by the lapels of his jacket and, because he'd gotten taller and she had not, she stood on her tiptoes to kiss him.

Tim generally preferred not to do this kind of thing in public, but he slid his hands to Steph's back and pulled her even closer. Because f their gloves and thick coats, the experience wasn't as heated as Stephanie probably intended for it to be, but they both smiled when they broke for air.

"Is that gonna make it suck more or less?" Steph asked, smirking a little.

"I dunno. Probably both." Tim tucked a stray piece of blonde hair behind Stephanie's ear. "Hungry? Wanna go for some waffles or something?"

"'Course I do. Where to, Wonder Boy?"

"I'm not usually over here. Your pick."

"'Kay. I know this great little waffle house. I went there with Francisco last week—"

"Francisco?"

Steph frowned at him. "It wasn't a date."

"Another guy takes you to get waffles and you want me to believe that it wasn't a date?" Tim teased.

"Must we start this now? On this the eve of our—"

"Outside voice."

Steph laughed and took Tim by the wrist, pulling him after her. "Shut up and buy me waffles."

…

"Happy Birthday!"

Stephanie yawned and sat up, smiling at the two faces in front of her.

"Waffles! Your favorite!"

"Thank you, sweetie." Steph took the tray full of hot waffles and balanced it carefully on her lap.

Tim kissed her on the cheek. "Morning."

"Morning. You guys didn't burn down the kitchen, did you?"

"Please. We just made waffles."

"I made them, mom!"

"Jack-Jack made the waffles, Tim?" Stephanie asked sharply as she ruffled her son's hair.

"Relax. They were frozen."

"It's my birthday and you're giving me frozen waffles? Oh, the indignity of it all!" she cried, making Jack giggle.

Tim sighed at his wife's melodramatics. "I made them from scratch last night and then I froze them so Jack could make you breakfast all by himself."

"Good job, boys," Steph praised each of them, and she picked up a waffle with her fingers and took a bite out of it. It was still cold on one side, but she ate it anyway, nodding approvingly.

"You like it?" Jack asked hopefully.

"I love it," Steph told him, kissing him on the cheek. "Why don't we go downstairs so mommy can have her breakfast with lots and lots of syrup?"

"Okay! I'll get it out for you!" the boy cried, excited, and he sped out of the room and down the stairs to the kitchen.

"Lots and lots of syrup?" Tim asked as Steph handed him the tray so that she could toss the covers away. "That bad?"

"Hey, I seem to remember somebody burning waffles in the waffle iron quite a while back. He must get his culinary skills from you."

"Oh, I remember that. That was because—" Tim hesitated as he remembered the exact reason that he burned the waffles so long ago.

"Because what?" Steph asked as she crossed the room to snatch her robe off the hook on the door.

Instead of answering, Tim caught her by the hip and pulled her close to him. "I love you," he said, and he pressed a kiss against her neck.

"Love you, too. Before you get much further, though, let's eat breakfast and send Jack to grandma's so we can celebrate my birthday the way I prefer."

"Fine," Tim said, grinning as he released Steph and handed her the robe she was reaching for. "Happy birthday." He pressed a much more chaste kiss on the top of her head as she ducked under his arm into the hallway.


End file.
